"They must be tricked," whispered Casteno, with a savage oath. "Tricked, do you see? You and I have too big a job on just now to pose as popular heroes. We must take those manuscripts from the hunchback whilst he is unconscious, and we must get away with them before he or Miss Napier can have any idea that they or we have gone." "But that would be a theft," I gasped. "Not a bit of it," returned Casteno. "Those documents never really belonged to the hunchback at all, for the dead priest in whose possession they were found had no title to them." "Then to whom do they belong?" I questioned. "Why, to the Order in Mexico, of course," replied the Spaniard. "Now you are warned, be ready, and keep close to me." And he turned a smiling face to the crowd who had drawn back from us in respectful sympathy, thinking, doubtless, that we wished to condole with each other on the unfortunate state of our companions. In an instant, too, he seized on this last pretext and acted on it. "Will some of you gentlemen," he cried in those clear, ringing tones of his, "carry our three senseless friends here to some place where they can be left in perfect safety and quietness? We have come on this flying machine trip from the floral fete at Shrewsbury, but, unfortunately, our leader got burned to death, and we have all had a terrible shock." "Poor things! Poor things!" murmured some of the bystanders nearest to us, and instantly the demeanour of the crowd changed, for they realised something of the horror of poor Captain Sparhawk's end. In silence an avenue was opened out for us, a waggonette with a pair of horses was driven up to the side of the fallen machine, and, tenderly and carefully, Doris, the hunchback, and the professor were lifted on to the sides and borne to a farm outbuilding about two hundred yards distant. Here the five of us were left alone, whilst the two or three strangers who had constituted themselves our chief helpers closed the place upon us as they sallied forth to find us doctors and some suitable refreshments. "Now," cried Casteno to me immediately I had seen that Doris was safe and was comfortably placed on a great heap of hay, "understand, we have not a moment to lose. Any second they may return, or some daring and inquisitive journalist may force his way in to interview us or to describe our battered condition. You pretend to be holding your flask to my father's lips, whilst I search his clothes. Then if one of them comes to their senses or one of our newly-made friends return it won't look at all suspicious." And, as half mechanically I did as he had directed, he flung himself on his knees beside the prostrate hunchback and passed his hands rapidly over his clothes.